Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-11-19, 17:16:

dr.zeissler wrote on 2022-11-19, 16:39:

Crazy! Gog sell's old games that do not run on old-pc's they were released for and also they don't work on new PC's...so where is the sweet-spot here....CRAP!

My experience with GOG releases has been as follows. DOS era games usually ship with DOSBox and can be installed on a modern PC without much hassle. After that, it's easy to copy over the folder containing the game to a real DOS machine and run it from there. Preferably, delete any files from the game folder which don't conform to the 8+3 naming convention beforehand, as they aren't needed on a real DOS system.

I would further add that things start getting fucky again during the era where DOS games started using CD audio. GOG compresses the audio tracks into ogg files, and I guess dosbox can mount them ok. But CD burning software and other mounting software can't. Or at least I don't know of any which does. Presumably you can convert it all back to regular cd audio, and burn the cd you need like that. But at that point I'd rather just buy the game off ebay if it's less than $20.

Namrok wrote on 2022-11-21, 14:23:

I would further add that things start getting fucky again during the era where DOS games started using CD audio. GOG compresses the audio tracks into ogg files, and I guess dosbox can mount them ok. But CD burning software and other mounting software can't. Or at least I don't know of any which does. Presumably you can convert it all back to regular cd audio, and burn the cd you need like that. But at that point I'd rather just buy the game off ebay if it's less than $20.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of them using .ogg files for storing CD audio tracks, since that's a lossy format. Had they gone with FLAC instead, it would have been easier to restore the music to its proper form.

But just like you say, that's often too much of a hassle, and I would also rather get a retail copy of such games.

For a retro-gamer on retro-machines you are far better with the retail-cd's and a crack rather than buying on GOG.